re: LSU Baseball's pitching decision from Friday Night: Someone explain them to me..

Without reading through all the responses, here is my theory on what happened with regard to Stallings.

Winning the first game of a series is critical. It is very hard to win the last two games to win the series. LSU had to do this vs. Arkansas.

I believe that Maneiri put in Stallings gambling that LSU would score a run in the bottom half to win the game. But LSU didn't. So he gambled another inning with Stallings. And again LSU did not score.

By then, Maneiri was committed to Stallings. He wanted this Friday night game badly. So he kept riding Stallings for 4 innings and he got bit in the arse for it since he burned Stallings for the remaining 2 games.

It would not have been so bad if LSU had won the game. Losing the game made it that much worse. But Maneiri brought it upon himself in one instance by not bunting with runners on first and second with no outs. Bregman brought it upon Maneiri when he was hit by the grounder hit by Hale.

And I want to reassure everyone that the no bunting argument is NOT hindsight. I was telling Maneiri into the TV to bunt for the entire at bat. It was an easy decision! Maneiri had the exact same situation a couple of games prior to Friday's game and he chose not to bunt then either. And again it did not work out. It will be interesting to see what he does if this situation comes up again.